| November 18, 2008 |
Vol 9, Issue 35
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 Get Ready to Lead!
"It's simple. We're just changing the world."
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The pursuit of happiness: how happy and unhappy people spend their time
| Greetings!... What do happy and unhappy people do differently? The results of a new study on that topic will be published in a forthcoming issue of Social Indicators Research. I've obtained a pre-publication copy and will share the the conclusions in this issue of GRTL. Make it a great week!
--Jeff
Jeff Myers, Ph.D., President (email me)
Passing the Baton International (visit website)
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| Words of wisdom about happiness |
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"But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful" (Psalm 68:3).
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Happy vs. Unhappy People: What Do They Do Differently?
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 Americans are generally happy people. We know this because a plethora of for-profit and government agencies constantly ask folks what they think and how they feel.
A December 2007 Gallup poll revealed that 84% of Americans are either "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with the way things are going in their personal lives.
According to that same study, 52% of Americans said they were "very happy." The author Joseph Carroll notes that "Republicans, married adults, those residing in higher income households, parents of young children, those attending church weekly, and whites are most likely to say they are satisfied and happy at this time."(1)
Economic and political difficulties will undoubtedly change those facts, but overall percentages of satisfaction and happiness have remained relatively stable since the poll was first taken in 1949.
So...more than half of Americans are happy, but what do they do that sets them apart from those who aren't?
It's difficult to find out what happy people do
"What can I do differently to be more happy?" is a question a lot of people might want to know the answer to.
How do you find the answer, though? You could get a group of "very happy" people in a room and ask them, but what if happy people don't think a lot about what makes them happy? Perhaps they just do things that produce happiness and avoid doing things that produce unhappiness.
Far better would be to tag along with people and ask them at various points whether they feel "very happy," "somewhat happy" or "not happy." You could then look at their activities at that moment and draw your conclusions.
Of course, it would be pretty distracting to follow people around, and your presence would undoubtedly change their activities (and probably make them feel unhappy!).
How to find out what happy people do--
without being too much of a pest
Researchers have developed a host of resourceful techniques to find out how people feel, ranging from rating a list of activities to keeping journals about activities and feelings. One research group gives people a pager and beeps them at random intervals, signaling them to record what they are doing and how they feel about it.
John P. Robinson, a pioneer in time usage studies at the University of Maryland, reviewed data from 1972 to 2006 to discover the differences between the activities of happy and unhappy people. He and his co-author Steven Martin revealed the following:
- Happy people go to church seven times more than unhappy people.
- Happier people socialize more with relatives and friends than unhappy people.
- Unhappy people invest 30% more time watching TV than very happy people.
- Among those who are married, "respondents happier with their marriage visit more, particularly with relatives, and they go to bars less often than the not happy. They have 30% more sex and attend religious services more, and read newspapers on most days."
- Ironically, unhappy people battle more with time--they report both feeling more rushed and feeling that they have too much time on their hands.(2)
The relationship between television
viewing and unhappiness
One of the clearest differences that emerged was how much television happy and unhappy people watched. Unhappy people watched 30% more. These results were significant at a .001 level, which means that there is less than a one in a thousand chance that the differences were due to chance.
Given the amount of time that Americans devote to television viewing, one would expect it to be an enjoyable, life-giving activity. But Robinson and Martin argue that exactly the opposite appears to be the case. Either happiness leads to lower viewing or more viewing leads to unhappiness.
So why do unhappy people keep doing
things that make them unhappy?
If such passive leisure makes people unhappy, why don't they change their habits? This is the enigma that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Chick-SENT-me-high) ponders in Finding Flow:
Hobbies are two and a half times more likely to produce a state of heightened enjoyment than TV does, and active games and sports about three times more. Yet...teenagers spend at least four times more of their free hours watching TV than doing hobbies or sports. Similar ratios are also true for adults. Why would we spend four times more time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us feel good?(3)
Activities that produce "flow" require an initial investment of attention before becoming enjoyable. You have to work at them, practice them and invest emotional energy in them. Passivity is less enjoyable, but it is easier.
A devil's bargain
Apparently, if pursuing happiness requires effort, many folks would rather remain unhappy. Explains Csikszentmihalyi, "If you fill your leisure time with passive leisure you won't find much enjoyment, but you will avoid getting in over your head. Apparently this is a bargain that many find worth making."(4)
Plus, just like weeds in a garden, there are cultural forces that thrive on peoples' lack of thoughtful engagement. Many politicians want to "think" on our behalf. Many entertainers want to "feel" on our behalf. Many corporations thrive only by keeping us perpetually dissatisfied with who we are and what we have.
In the absence of effective stewardship of our time, the weeds of unhappiness grow up and are only dislodged by the sweat of the brow. It's a devil's bargain. Don't make it!
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(1) http://www.gallup.com/poll/103483/Most-Americans-Very-Satisfied-Their-Personal-Lives.aspx
(2) John P. Robinson and Steven Martin, "What do happy people do?" Social Indicators Research, v. 89, n. 3, December 2008.
(3) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 67.
(4) Ibid, p. 68.
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